Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Martina]

Malala's classmate: 'Every girl in Swat is Malala. We will educate ourselves. We will win. They can't defeat us.'

First Libyan and now Pakistani regular folks are out in the streets calling for a stop to terrorist attacks in their countries. Heartening

[Kobi]

SAN FRANCISCO - School administrators and parents are wrestling with how to respond to news that some male high school athletes created a statistics-based fantasy league that awarded points when girls the boys "drafted" were rumoured to have engaged in sexual activity.

Parents at Piedmont High School were notified of the league's existence in a letter and email Friday.

Varsity athletes used the online competition, modeled after fantasy leagues common in major league sports, as a bonding activity for the last five or six years, Principal Rich Kitchens said in the letter.

"Male students earn points for documented engagement in sexual activities with female students," he wrote.

Most of the female students who were drafted into the league weren't aware of the competition, he added.

Officials at the San Francisco Bay area suburban school learned about the game during an assembly on date rape earlier this month. Administrators interviewed students, parents and staff members, but weren't able to identify any participants in the competition, which students referred to as a "Fantasy Slut League," Kitchens said.

http://news.yahoo.com/calif-high-sch...010058522.html

[Kobi]

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (AP) — Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, "that's something God intended."

Mourdock, who's been locked in one of the country's most watched Senate races, was asked during the final minutes of a debate with Democratic challenger Rep. Joe Donnelly whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said.

Mourdock became the second GOP Senate candidate to find himself on the defensive over comments about rape and pregnancy. Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin said during a television interview in August that women's bodies have ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of what he called "legitimate rape." Since his comment, Akin has repeatedly apologized but has refused to leave his race despite calls to do so by leaders of his own party, from GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on down.

It was not immediately clear what affect Mourdock's comments might have during the final two weeks before the Nov. 6 election. But they could prove problematic. Romney distanced himself from Mourdock on Tuesday night — a day after a television ad featuring the former Massachusetts governor supporting the GOP Senate candidate began airing in Indiana.

http://news.yahoo.com/mourdock-god-r...GFnZQ--;_ylv=3

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by Kobi

SAN FRANCISCO - School administrators and parents are wrestling with how to respond to news that some male high school athletes created a statistics-based fantasy league that awarded points when girls the boys "drafted" were rumoured to have engaged in sexual activity.

Parents at Piedmont High School were notified of the league's existence in a letter and email Friday.

Varsity athletes used the online competition, modeled after fantasy leagues common in major league sports, as a bonding activity for the last five or six years, Principal Rich Kitchens said in the letter.

"Male students earn points for documented engagement in sexual activities with female students," he wrote.

Most of the female students who were drafted into the league weren't aware of the competition, he added.

Officials at the San Francisco Bay area suburban school learned about the game during an assembly on date rape earlier this month. Administrators interviewed students, parents and staff members, but weren't able to identify any participants in the competition, which students referred to as a "Fantasy Slut League," Kitchens said.

http://news.yahoo.com/calif-high-sch...010058522.html

I was very disturbed when I first read about this in the local news here in the SF Bay Area. The school is in Piedmont. Piedmont is in the East Bay and it is an upper middle class community. It is the same city that the recent assasinated Ambassador to Libya was raised in. Most of these teens come from a very privileged background. I shutter to think of what these young men may grow up to be.

The City I live in now shares a Fire Chief with the City of Piedmont. The city where we live has a public school system where the students do well academically and is very similar to the Piedmont public school system. Apparently money cannot buy humanity, civility or an expectation of decency for young women, girls.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Greyson

I was very disturbed when I first read about this in the local news here in the SF Bay Area. The school is in Piedmont. Piedmont is in the East Bay and it is an upper middle class community. It is the same city that the recent assasinated Ambassador to Libya was raised in. Most of these teens come from a very privileged background. I shutter to think of what these young men may grow up to be.

The City I live in now shares a Fire Chief with the City of Piedmont. The city where we live has a public school system where the students do well academically and is very similar to the Piedmont public school system. Apparently money cannot buy humanity, civility or an expectation of decency for young women, girls.

Unfortunately, some of these young men will grow up to be the leaders, the objecifiers, the rapists, the perpetrators of domestic violence, and the oppressors of future generations of women.

The really sad part is that the premise behind this is not much different from Zuckerburgs thinking when he created facebook.

[Martina]

I interviewed at that school. I didn't get the job, probably because I don't have that upper middle class sheen. But I don't hold that against them. I got tons o job offers that year. Anyway, I have to say that the administrators seemed like truly decent people. That's not always the impression one gets.

My point is that it is the culture. Upper middle class white male. I bet the school will come down hard on them. I don't believe the implication that the school might be covering up for them though I know that happens. It's not a private school. And it's near Oakland, therefore politically correct by osmosis. Teachers who suspected that there was a cover up would whistle blow, I am sure. So I can't imagine that happening for real.

[Soon]

How Many More Women Like Savita Halappanavar Should We Tolerate?

[Kätzchen]

Independent Lens (PBS) shared today that they plan on airing a film called The Invisible War and also added a link to an article published by The New Yorker (Four Generals, Four Scandals, and A Sprawling Rape Case).

(LINK)


I hope to be able to watch this film.
I read the article and took heart that
Gloria Allred is not backing down from
advocating on behalf of the known victims.

[Gemme]

This lady is pretty neat.

I think it's a crock that the automatic theory is that she's just a pretty face and not that she can be a CEO and a model, simultaneously.

[Kobi]

A University of North Carolina sexual assault victim has been charged with violating the school's honor code and creating a hostile environment for her attacker by speaking out about her ordeal.

The charge came approximately a month after Landen Gambill, a sophomore at UNC—who last spring reported being raped by a student she says is still on campus—filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Gambill, as well as others who filed with her—including current and former students, and Melinda Manning, the school's former assistant dean of students—allege that the school had pressured Manning into underreporting sex offense cases.

An email sent to Gambill last week by the school's graduate attorney general—published by Jezebel.com—reads in part:

You are being charged with the following Honor Code violation(s):

I.C.1.c. - Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another (other than on the basis of protected classifications identified and addressed in the University's Policy on Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination) so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for University employment, participation in University-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life.

The matter has been turned over to UNC's Honor Court. If found guilty, Gambill could be subject to a range of sanctions, including probation, suspension or even expulsion.

"This type of gross injustice is unacceptable," Gambill wrote on her Facebook page. "It's important to me that we continue to advocate for the rights of survivors—not just because it affects me personally but because I desperately hope no one has to go [through] anything like this again."

Some of Gambill's supporters have also taken to Facebook and Twitter, changing their avatars to say "I Stand With Landen" and tweeting messages with the hashtag #standwithlanden.

Colby Bruno, managing attorney for the national Victim Rights Law Center, told InsideHigherEd.com the code violation is "outrageous.” For the university "to entertain this as a viable claim is a problem, because it's not,” Bruno said.

The university would not comment on Gambill's case, citing federal privacy laws. But at a board meeting last month, Leslie Strohm, UNC's vice chancellor and general counsel, told trustees "the allegations with respect to the underreporting of sexual assault are false, they are untrue, and they are just plain wrong."

In 2010, the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women "will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period," and that schools with more than 6,000 students "average one rape per day during the school year.”

According to New York University's "National Statistics about Sexual Violence on College Campuses," fewer than 5 percent of such cases are reported to law enforcement.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...142933849.html

[femmeInterrupted]

http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/why-s...y-matters.html

[Kobi]

A former employee at a Christian college has enlisted the help of high-profile attorney Gloria Allred to sue a California school that allegedly fired her for engaging in premarital sex, NBC's "Today" reports. In a bizarre twist, the school reportedly went on to offer the pregnant woman's job to her then-fiance.

Teri James, 29, told the news outlet that she did sign a two-page contract with San Diego Christian College that included a provision agreeing not to engage in "sexually immoral behavior including premarital sex."

"I needed a job in this economy and so I never thought that anything would happen," James explained to "Today."

But James said she was humiliated after being pulled into her supervisor's office last fall, where she was asked if she was pregnant and then was let go. After James lost her job, she claims the school offered a position to her now-husband, even though they were aware he'd had sex before getting married, too.

During a news conference featured in a KTLA report, James said she felt she was treated unfairly.

"I was unmarried, pregnant and they took away my livelihood," James said.

Legal clashes involving teachers at religious schools who've been fired for pre-martial sex are not entirely uncommon.

Last year in Florida, an appeals court ruled that a teacher's case would be moving to trial after the judges decided the school might have fired the womannot because she admitted to getting pregnant while unmarried, but because they didn't want to find a replacement for her during while she'd be on maternity leave, according to Reuters.

And as ABC News previously reported, an unmarried teacher in Texas sought legal counsel after she was fired over her pregnancy. The women offered to expedite her wedding in order to keep her job, but school officials still said "no," claiming the pregnancy violated their definition of being a Christian role model.

The legal waters can get murky, though, when contracts between teachers and religious schools are involved.

After a Catholic school in Ohio fired Christa Dias for becoming pregnant through artificial insemination, the school aruged that she had violated Catholic doctrine and failed to fulfill her contract.

“This is not the classic pregnancy discrimination case in which pretexts must be evaluated and discriminatory intent must be divined,” the school’s attorneys wrote, according to Cincinnati.com.

Dias sued the archdiocese and according to Courthousenews, the trial is set to begin on March 19.

Some teachers, on the other hand, have decided to leave religiously affiliated schools rather than agree to lifestyle contracts.

As Christianity Today reported in 2012, a third of the faculty at the Southern Baptist-based Shorter University decided to quit rather than sign a "lifestyle statement," which condemned drinking in public, sex before marriage and homosexuality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2790085.html